Are removable battery's that big of a deal

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I wanted to get other peoples take on this. Moto showed the Droid Razr Maxx at ces. The only real differnce is its about 1mm thicker but packs 3300 mah. A lot of people raged about the battery not being removable but would you trade that for basically have a extended battery in a normal phone frame

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Nonremovable in the original Razr was a dealbreaker for me. 3300mAh is a whole 'nother story!

In general I prefer the convenience of having a fresh spare handy on a trip, and the security of knowing I could have brand new battery performance a year later by picking up another off eBay for $5, but I can easily see the new Maxx being viable for a lot more people.

My Rezound w/2750 is much more useful to me than w/the stock 1620.

Nonremovables have the minor advantages that they can be a little thinner and more resistant to liquid spills.

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this also has me thinking about wasted space in phones. Im using a Nexus s 4g with i think its around 1500. Moto fit all that into a phone thats 8.9 mm. Even if other OEM's keep removable battery's they should be able to fit a hell of alot more than what they are putting into these phones. I carry a spare battery at all times to me its the price you pay for have a mini computer. It would be nice to not have to.

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Agreed. There's been some debate about whether the extended battery in the Rezound worsened the signal (since they have different rear covers where its antennas are mounted), and I finally decided that actually yeah I am willing to lose a slight bit of range for 70% more juice. Luckily my own back and forth testing showed there wasn't much signal difference at all.

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The problem for me with a non removable battery is batteries die. I've never had a battery that didn't need to be replaced for two years. They usually only last one year for me. This might be ok if you are the type that gets a new phone every six months, but if you plan on keeping the phone for the whole two years, not being able to replace the battery is not an option IMO.

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The problem for me with a non removable battery is batteries die. I've never had a battery that didn't need to be replaced for two years. They usually only last one year for me. This might be ok if you are the type that gets a new phone every six months, but if you plan on keeping the phone for the whole two years, not being able to replace the battery is not an option IMO.

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I have never had to replace a cell phone battery, and since I can charge my phone whenever I want, I don't need to change batteries or use an extended one. So a non removable battery wouldn't bother me a bit.

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Yes. Lithium ion batteries that are used frequently do not last very long (usually not more than 2 years) and need to be replaced eventually. With a non-removable battery you need to get an entirely new phone. Battery life is also poor on smartphones, so being able to swap out batteries is useful.

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It surely is. In the case of the Razr, I understand the reason they designed it like that. With a removable battery there is no way they could have gotten to the slim size they were shootin for. After all, that IS one of the major draws for the phone and the main point of their marketing campaign.

However, there is always a situation in which a device such as this could freeze. There are multiple reasons that it could happen and a variety of causes. To not have a way to power off completely, you are left without an option.

This brings a question to mind, because I cannot fathom that someone in the R&D department in Hardware Design at Moto would not have recognized this as an issue. There has to be some way ton initiate a hard-reset without a battery pull since that is not physically possible. There has to be, right?

Anyway.. to answer the question - YES it is a big deal. Having no battery pull option is a "deal-breaker" for many people.

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This brings a question to mind, because I cannot fathom that someone in the R&D department in Hardware Design at Moto would not have recognized this as an issue. There has to be some way ton initiate a hard-reset without a battery pull since that is not physically possible. There has to be, right?

Click to expand...

Yes, some magic simultaneous button combination that's hard wired to work even if the phone's hung or crashed. Probably similar to iPhone.

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I agree it is a huge deal. I have had a couple of iPod devices die due to the batteries going kaput. If the batteries had been replaceable I could have continued to use the devices by doing a simple battery swap.

Choices are always good, especially for Android devices. When they limit user choice, like no microSD card, or no battery, then it reduces the value of the product to the end user. Freedom is Android's strength, and anything that takes away from the freedom is a big deal, imho.

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Yes, some magic simultaneous button combination that's hard wired to work even if the phone's hung or crashed. Probably similar to iPhone.

Click to expand...

Usually Vol up + vol down + power for 5 secs. Works for both my tab and my phone, both Android devices.

Tinfoil hat time:

Also, a +1 for removable battery for the tin foil hat community: The only way to completely keep the aliens/spies from secretly recording/tracking you is to remove the battery. My conspiracy theorist co worker told me that this is why new phones don't have removable batteries.

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Personally, and this is simply my opinion, I think people tend to blow the non-removable battery thing out of proportion!

With the Razr, as an example, I carry an external battery pack with me that has about 2x the capacity of the battery in my Razr... is smaller in size then the Razr itself... and has it's own built in micro SD cable. When my Razr needs a boost, I simply plug the battery pack into the Razr and stuff both back into my pocket. While the Razr is charging I can still use the phone and, to be honest, the combined size of the devices next to each other really isn't noticeably larger than the thickness of most other Android smartphones.

In terms of the internal battery eventually going bad... the last three smartphones I had ran well on their original batteries for 2 years before each phone was replaced. So personally I don't see this as a major concern. As time goes on I'm expecting that we will continue to see small retail battery replacement businesses spring up like the ones in Manhattan. You walk in the front door, hand them your iDevice, they open the device (in front of you), and replace the faulty battery. If I believe the reports this process typically doesn't take more than 10 or 15 minutes. Could a service like this be extended to the Razr? If there is adequate demand for it, I see no reason why not...

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I hear your Martimus, but here's where I'm coming from: I bought an iPod Classic 40GB for ~$300 or so a few years ago, along with a Sansa e260. The iPod Classic stopped charging / working 3 years ago, and it simply was not worth the cost or the hassle to take my iPod Classic somewhere to get the battery replaced.

My Sansa e260 battery is still working great, but if it stopped working, it's a simple matter of ordering a replacement online, and popping it in when it gets here.

Yes it's a minor thing, but over time minor things become big things, simply because we add unnecessary barriers to ease of maintenance. So to me I'd rather avoid the situation in the first place, and have the option to easily swap out a part myself if I can.

My iPhone 3GS is now suffering the same fate, where the battery lasts for 30-45 minutes. I am not going to pay a 3rd party service to replace the battery, it's not worth it. If it was a user replaceable battery, I'd easily swap it and get so much more use out of it.

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Jan 8, 2012

Point taken. However, i just don't think the consumer should have to go through all that trouble. But then again, the choice is still yours and if that is the phone you want and are willing to put up with that or whatever else... then good on ya.